Excel

Split Image

Rotten

At one point in the 1980s (roughly •84-•87), the term “crossover” actually meant something • something like speed metal crossing over into hardcore, and vice versa • and an attendant culture quickly sprung up around it, longhairs and skate punks similarly united under one flag of thrashin’ rage. But “crossover” these days?! Man, that•s a different • and, more specifically, sad • story altogether. Anyways, Excel were one of the frontrunners in the crossover race, and their debut album, Split Image, was an undeniable blueprint for the short-lived marketing term, the record now being reissued for the first time on compact disc. At their most definable, Excel at this point found the middle ground between early Suicidal Tendencies and middle-period D.R.I. • more hardcore than Suicidal, more metal than the Imbeciles • Split Image squarely landing itself somewhere’s betwixt the former’s Join The Army and the latter•s Crossover (too easy, eh?). But this reissue really couldn•t have come at a worse time, because frankly, the interest just ain’t there, not even with those punters who were busy living teenage riots during the album’s original release and have since gone on to either comfy, middle-class lives working in an office or (more likely) disgruntled, burned-out ones working at a gas station. Still, Rotten Records did a dandy of a job with Split Image‘s reissue, cramming its 16-page booklet with loads of photos and flyers and tacking onto the record a hefty sum of 11 bonus tracks. Trip on down memory lane, heshers.